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Description

A decade after director James Cameron's original Terminator wreaked havoc on Sarah Connor, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as another Model 101 cyborg. This time, he's been programmed and teleported to the past to protect Sarah's 10-year-old son John (Edward Furlong) — the boy destined to lead the human resistance movement in the future war against the tyrannical machines — from the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a newer, more advanced, and seemingly indestructible Terminator made entirely of shape-shifting liquid metal.

Thad Starner has never squared off against a liquid-metal adversary, but he is known as one of the world's leading experts on what it's like to live a cyborg's life. A pioneering researcher in the field of wearable computing, Starner has been wearing a computer and display regularly since 1993. Mounted over the left lens of his eyeglasses is a tiny computer monitor; he sees its display — pictures, emails, appointments, any information he needs — superimposed on top of the world.

Before the film, he shares key insights and reveals some surprising uses for wearable computers.

With Science on Screen, the Coolidge Corner Theatre creatively pairs a feature film or documentary with lively presentations by notable figures from the world of science, medicine, and technology. The Science on Screen series is co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with additional support from Gesmer, Updegrove LLP, and Richard Anders.

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Additional Information

Thad Starner is an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a technical lead on Google's Project Glass. He received a PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory, where he founded the MIT Wearable Computing Project.

Starner's interest in wearable computers and augmented reality started when he saw The Terminator as an MIT sophomore. He was struck by the view as seen from Schwarzenegger’s eyes: text scrolling over his view of the physical world. For the last 20 years, his teams in academia and industry have studied whether a similar interface could be helpful in everyday living.

Starner was perhaps the first to integrate a wearable computer into his everyday life as a personal assistant, and he coined the term "augmented reality" in 1990 to describe the types of interfaces he envisioned. His groups' prototypes on gesture-based interfaces, mobile music players, and mobile instant messaging foreshadowed now-commonplace devices and services. Starner’s work has been featured on CNN, NPR, the BBC, CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's 48 Hours, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.